This is a wonderfully easy read, but not unchallenging. It is nicely divided into two halves. The first half consists of the necessity and challenges of preaching. As a seasoned preacher I found that at times Webster was challenging my views of what it means to preach or why I am a preacher. Each of the chapters deals with an aspect of the call or necessity of preaching. I can say that it would be a great book for a new preacher or someone who was training to be a preacher.

The second half of the book addresses seven situations that a preacher will be called to speak on. The first three deal with situations that are dictated by the Church calendar: Advent, Lent and Easter. The remaining deal with situations that will be dealt with on an occasional manner: Memorials (Funerals), Weddings, Crisis Situations (personal, congregational, national or world wide). While each of these must be addressed by the minister/preacher in a case by case and congregation by congregation manner, the way Webster approaches the situations can give an understanding of how to handle them or if needed maybe even a starting point (especially for a new minister).

All in all this book would be a great means of sharpening the preacher in his or her calling. For both the seasoned minister who might need some refining of the edge or the new minister who might need the edge defined so that it can cut correctly and effectively.

Having just completed a homiletics course, I was very interested in another book on preaching; however, from the beginning, it was very clear that as a catholic clergy, I was not the target audience here. To begin with, catholic homilies are generally tied to the readings for the day, so I really don’t have much flexibility in picking the scripture text that I want to use … it is given to me. Additionally, the order of service (aka liturgical rubrics) and also fairly strict as well … so I was down to mostly looking for tips and ideas on how to preach better. For the most part, I didn’t get that much as most of what I did get was very generic or straight appeals to emotion/motivation … the you must have a solid relationship with God/Jesus and live a spiritual and moral life … which comes across more like a just do it speech … in other words, I didn’t find as much of the practical advice that I was looking for … it was still decent and I did pick up concepts and ideas that should help, but a lot of it didn’t really work for me.